Disguised as scientific critique of modern biblical
research, Professor Whitelam's book, "The invention of ancient
Israel", is instead an unoriginal attempt to construct an argument for
denial of the Jewish claims on the Land of Israel.
Professor Whitelam claims the following:
- The Hebrew Bible is a literary construct of Persian or/and
Hellenistic era with minimal historicity in the most of it parts. The
archeological data for the "biblical" period is scarce and the data
interpretation ambiguous.
- The Israelite/Jewish presence in Palestine is just one of many
"threads" in the fabric of Palestinian history. Liberating
mainstream historical and archeological research from the influence of
the Hebrew Bible will bring this into focus.
- The successful implementation of the Zionist project - the
return to the Land of Israel and creation of the State of Israel -
inspired and predisposed the western Biblical researchers toward the
Jewish cause.
- Decoupling the historical research from the Zionist influence,
as well as from the "Orientalistic" attitudes of the Western and
Israeli researchers will lead to the dominance of the Palestinian
narrative.
- Further development of the Palestinian version of history will
help to prove the illegality of Jewish claims on the land of Israel.
The problem with Whitelam's approach is not in the
shortage of archeological data proving or disproving the existence of
ancient kingdom of Israel. The problem with Professor Whitelam is in the
fact that he treats the Holy Torah as some tendentious history textbook.
It is not. The Hebrew Bible is the Narrative of Jewish Civilization and
foundation of Judaism. The centrality of the Land of Israel and
Jerusalem to that Narrative is beyond any argument.
In calling for Palestinization of Israeli history Whitelam
commits an act of disrespect toward the Holy Torah and toward the Jews.
That disrespect is as old as the Bible itself. It is called
anti-Semitism. Scottish Professor Whitelam does not belong to Jewish
Civilization. Jews are the Other for him. He should give them the same
respect and acceptance his guru Edward Said taught him to give to
Muslims or Hindus.
Professor Whitelam is not the first to attempt eliminating
the memory of ancient Israel. There were many before him. For instance,
the chapter on "kingdoms of Israel and Judea" was taken out of the
Soviet school textbooks in 1949 on orders of Stalin as one of the
measures taken to extinguish the Jewish national life in USSR. Nothing
came out of that. Stalin died, Communism fell apart and the chapter on
ancient Israel returned to the Russian textbook. The further attempts
to eliminate the memory of ancient Israel will meet the same fate.
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